You used a playguide though. I do a lot of wandering and self-exploring, that I think I miss out on some of the convos since when I finally meet the person, I've already got their quest item in my inventory.

Dubz is right though that the game mechanics never really change from temple to temple, from cave to cave, whether you are fighting a dragon or a draugr.

If it were a Zelda game, you would have had loads of fun distractions like horse-racing, horseback archery and swordery, and boss battles that are a puzzle figuring out how to defeat. Then you would have temples with complex puzzles that went beyond cryptic matching of symbols, like dropping a statue from several stories above, so that you could drag it onto a switch, or using your shield to reflect sunlight onto a magical switch, and you actually had to survey each room for clues, rather than useless loot. This is what gave each temple variety and fun to explore.

Mounted combat is the headline addition in Skyrim update 1.6, due out on PC and consoles soon.
As detailed on the Bethesda Blog, the patch will allow both ranged and melee combat on horseback.
Update 1.6 also brings with it a number of bug fixes and stability tweaks. PC users can try it out now in Steam beta, though a final release date has not yet been set.
Here's the change log in full: New features:

Which reminds me: I'd prefer it if the UI indicated the difference between set quests and generated quests. It's not that I don't mind doing the generated stuff, I'd just like to know what is, erm, 'hand-crafted' one-time content and what is filler.

The main quest has two different tracks, one for Vampire Lord and one for Dawnguard.

Dawnguard will offer 10-20 hours of gameplay, depending on how you play.

Even though the two story tracks are separate, they’ll come together at various key points in the story. “Whatever the Macguffin is,” Howard told me, “both sides come together around that point, and then it diverges afterwards.

The demo I played was partway into the Vampire Lord track. The plot involved helping a woman vampire named Serana find her mother, Valerica, who had fled Tamriel to a plane of Oblivion called “Soul Cairn”. We performed a ritual to open a portal to Soul Cairn.
Serana lives in a castle called Castle Volkhar, which is located in a previously inaccessable region of the far northwest corner of the map, near Icewater Jetty.

Serana and Valerica are both caught up in a much larger story involving pure vampires that followed Molag Bal. Those vampires are called the “Daughters of Coldharbor”.

There is at least one new dragon, named Durnivhiir. (Though I’m pretty sure it’s not spelled that way? Anyway, he’s a dragon. I didn’t meet him.)

Soul Cairn itself is a hefty chunk of land and feels somewhat similar to the late-stage realm you visit in the main quest of Skyrim, only much bigger. There are multiple castles and fortresses around, and things are shadowy and mysterious.

The plot involves an Elder Scroll. Yes! Another quest that directly involves an Elder Scroll!

Soul Cairn is but one of at least two large new landmasses in the game. However, the story will also play out across the Skyrim we all know and love, which is really cool. Said Howard, “You’re still going to be exploring the landmass that came with the main game, and then, I want to avoid quantifying, but there are at least two very large new areas. The Soul Cairn is one of them.”

The Vampire Lord works much like a werewolf in the main game — you can trigger the transformation with the right shoulder-button, and transform back at any time.

Once you’re a Vampire Lord, you no longer have access to your inventory items and can only use Vampire Lord abilities. The camera goes to third-person, as well, just like when you’re a werewolf.

The Vampire Lord’s abilities include Raise Dead, a spell that presumably raises dead enemies and has them fight for you, Summon Gargoyle, which (duh!) summons a gargoyle to fight alongside you, Vampiric Grip, which lets you grab and throw enemies, Vampire’s sight, which is basically night-vision, and the best one…

BATS. Maybe I’ve mentioned that you can blast around as a cloud of bats? Because you totally can. Also, there’s a second ability that lets you surround yourself with a cloud of vampire bats that damage your foes. Sort of like any other area-attack, only with bats and therefore superior in every way.

The Vampire Lord also has his own skill tree, which includes a number of abilities centred around regenerating health and stamina by killing and sucking blood.

Two of the cooler-looking high-level Vampire Lord abilities include Mist Form, which lets you become intangible mist as you regenerate your health and stamina, and Supernatural Reflexes, which makes every enemy in the world move much slower than you do.

In terms of difficulty, Bethesda has taken high-level characters into account. Dawnguard overall as a DLC, adds things across the game for higher-level characters.

Dawnguard is balanced assuming you’re at least level 10. 80 per cent of players are at least level 10.
If you’re a werewolf, becoming a Vampire Lord will cure you. You can’t be both at the same time.

There will be lots of sidequests in Dawnguard: “There will be [sidequests] within the factions,” Howard said, “for the most part, they’re anscillary things, miscellaneous quests that fill out what’s going on in either faction. Kind of like the way the factions worked [in the main game.]“

The sidequests won’t all be tied to the main Vampires/Dawnguard storyline. “There actually a really, really good other quest in there with a really cool dungeon” that has nothing to do with Dawnguard‘s main storyline. Two really’s! It must be good.

Dawnguard expands the game beyond the main quest in a lot of small ways. “There’s a lot of other things in [the expansion],” Howard told me. It’s easier for Bethesda to talk about the expansion in terms of the Dawnguard storyline, but the team has lots of other things they’ve been working on that they want to put in.

I know, I know.... No time for it and don't want to get back in now, less than two weeks before I leave. I'll see if it runs on the laptop I'll be travelling with. Considering it works on consoles, I think I should be ok.